This white bitch lives in Fort Greene, you’re probably thinking, what does she have to complain about? But I can’t help it that I’m white. My parents worked hard to get where they are and they’ve never given me any money—food, shelter and the sum total of everything else I have needed to be successful doesn’t count; where was I? I love your butt, it’s so interesting. Oh; baths! Get the HELLaway from me???

I’m serious? Don’t bathe me or I’ll die?? You actually cannot touch my hair right now. Everyone is always touching my hair. “Oh, your ears are so soft.” “Oh, what a nice big boy.” The misgendering is a really nice touch! People think my body belongs to them; that’s dog culture for you, just a lifetime of unwanted touch and verbal street harassment. “Look at that big butt,” they say, and they slap me. My tail is fluffy, sure; that’s its natural texture, it’s not a playground for—do you have a tail? You wouldn’t get it, and I wish you wouldn’t try. I am currently eating chicken bones out of the garbage and nothing on my body exists for your pleasure: not my tummy, not my nose, and certainly not my paws. What were we talking about?

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Dog culture. Chicken bones. Baths. I don’t have to apologize for being dirty. The normative cultural paradigm dictating that a dog—particularly a female dog, an average bitch in all her glory—must be clean in order to be acceptable within the human sphere connotes a history dictated by racist, sexist, Puritanical and patriarchal structures, for dogs as it ever was for anyone. So; please; get away from me; turn off the nauseating tap in the bathtub. It’s National Dog Day, I am covered in chicken bones and garbage, and it’s time to let a bitch be so.